I have an apology to make.

Yesterday I lost my temper with Anna Firth, our local Conservative candidate for MP at the forthcoming election.

I told her to fuck off.

You see, we have a little sticker just below our doorbell, informing potential knockers (or ringers) that we do not welcome cold callers, including canvassers.

And, well, she went and rang the doorbell.

From a distance, she looks a little like one of my clients, so I answered the door.

And then I recognised her. I pointed at the sticker (just in case she had missed it as her hand passed directly over it to push the button) and asked if her inability to read was a symptom of Tory education cuts.

Someone with more common sense may have just muttered an apology and walked away. But, with stereotypical Tory attitude, she started arguing that during an election campaign she had a legal right to knock on my door.

To which I replied…

“Even if I have a sign specifically asking you not to? Fuck off.”

…and slammed the door shut.

With hindsight

You know how after you say something you wish you’d thought of something better or wittier to say? You think of all those “and another thing” comments.

This morning I rummaged through my recycling and found her campaign leaflet that had been put through the door a few days ago.

A nice sign for my window, saying “Please don’t knock here, we are voting for…”

So, hang on a second here. It’s alright for me to put up your sign telling your far more appealing opponents not to knock, but it’s ok for you to ignore my sign?

I really wish I’d had that leaflet to hand when she knocked. Because I would have acted very differently.

I’m sorry Anna.

I should have said…

“Fuck right off”.

The post An open letter of apology to Anna Firth appeared first on Dear Geek.

James is 13 years old.

I didn’t realise he was born with a colour defect until he was around 3 years old.  On the way to preschool we used to do play games like, what number is on that front door, what colour is that car etc. 

James was always good at maths (unlike me!), he was bang on with the house numbers but his colours were all mixed up, it was obvious he was guessing at the colours of the cars, sometimes he got the colour right but more often than not, it was wrong.  The absolute deciders was when James and Cameron were colouring in a picture.  Cameron got so cross with James because he had coloured in the sky with a pink pen.  James thought it was blue ….

Not long afterwards we were waiting in Clarks shoe shop for the boys’ feet to be measured.  We took the ticket from the little machine and asked James to keep an eye on the counter for our ticket number.  He had no idea what we were talking about because he couldn’t see any numbers on the screen.  We then found out that he couldn’t see red on a black background. 

There is a history of colour deficiencies in my family.  In fact, the majority of men on my mum’s side are colour deficient to some degree.  To mention a few, my grandad, his brothers (so my great Uncles), my first cousin, my mum’s 1^st cousins.  Cameron, my youngest son has managed to escape, as has my nephew (my sister’s son).  So, it seems it’s luck of the draw if you manage to avoid it!  The girls carry the chromosome, but it seems to come out in the boys.  It turns out, my mum is fairly unique!  She’s around the 1 in 20 females who are actually colour deficient, most unusual. 

After the pink sky incident, when James was 5, I decided to look into it further to try and find out what he sees.  We visited an Optician near to home and James had a look at the Ishihara plates, the most common form of colour blindness test.  It contains a book full of circles with dots of varying colours and numbers within them.  James was only able to read the first one, which was number 12.  The optician asked me if James actually knew his numbers, because only being able to see one of them is extremely rare.  The poor boy just couldn’t see any more of the numbers within the dots. 

I was then told that there was a high chance that James could see no colour whatsoever, in fact he could be monochrome colour deficient.  So, I prepared for his life to be in black, white and shades of grey.  Monochromy is extremely rare, around 1 in 300,000 people have this.  We never avoided discussing colour at home, he was pretty much self-taught, he knew a banana was yellow, the sky is blue, the grass is green, strawberries are red.

We all felt absolutely devastated for him but the optician said he didn’t know any different, he had never seen any colour and would never miss it.  He was right, so that’s how I explained it to everybody else.  It was massive shock, we thought he could never see the green grass, the blue sky, a sunset/sunrise and all the beautiful coloured things in life which we take for granted. 

As James got older, we had to explain to teachers what we thought James could see.  Now, I realise it’s extremely hard to get your head round, but we described it as “imagine watching an old black and white film”, James was potentially seeing everything in sepia.  

Around the age of 8 or so, James was starting to talk about some colours he could see.  He thought he could see yellow and to this day, he still says his favourite colour is red (we’ve had a lot of arguments about the colour red!).  As you can imagine, it was near on impossible for James to explain what he could see, he could see, what he could see and he had no idea what we could see.  It was all a guessing game. 

James has always struggled with the white board at school.  Teachers are fans of coloured pens (actually, I think most of us are!) and PowerPoint presentations, but James was finding it impossible to read a lot of pale colours on a white background.  We decided the best way of getting over this for the teachers to print everything out in black and white.  It became even more complicated when more and more children were diagnosed with dyslexia and earlings (where a lot of different colours are needed on the white board)!  In the latter years of primary school, James’ teachers would mark up all his colouring pencils and pens for him. 

Last year we decided to get a further colour-blind test done.  There aren’t’ many opticians nearby that have the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 Hue colour vision test.  This test is based on 88 coloured plates which are shown to you in 4 batches of 22.  James completed one batch of 22 plates and arranged the rows of plates in the colour order he could see. 

For the first time ever, we came out of there with a clearer idea of what James could see.  He is what’s known as “strong protan” or protanopia.  It was a massive relief to find out he DOES SEE SOME COLOUR!  We see an average of 1 million colours, James sees around 220,000 of those.

Here’s the definition:

Strong Protan is one of the most challenging forms of color vision deficiency because it significantly limits the range of color compared to common forms of color blindness.

James was beginning to be able to explain what he could see.  He had a real aversion to any green food, he refused to eat any green vegetables.  Why would I make him anything which he saw as sludge coloured (although I did keep trying)!  We stuck to carrots, sweetcorn and the occasional cauliflower.  Fruit wasn’t too much of an issue, but he always preferred the red grapes to the green ones!  He hated colouring in, board games and jigsaw puzzles. 

Now I knew James could see some colour, I looked into the colour-blind glasses which so many people had mentioned.  Last year the only supplier was online and based in the US.  I decided it was too risky, the results weren’t well known and glasses for protan didn’t exist, on top of all that, they were really expensive, and we felt it could have made it worse.   

So, you can imagine our joy when we heard a radio interview on BBC Radio 2 a few weeks ago.  They were discussing colour deficiencies and glasses to correct it.  It was the most fascinating interview I have ever heard.  Jez, the optician being interviewed was based in St Albans and he is the only UK supplier of the EnChroma glasses.  Michael, a third year firm student also has moderate protanomaly.  He is a massive success story, you can read his blog here.

https://www.eyesonstalbans.com/enchroma-outdoor-indoor-lenses-review/

https://www.eyesonstalbans.com/radio-2/

I e-mailed the opticians straight away to see if we could have an appointment to try out the EnChroma glasses.  I have a feeling they had been inundated with similar requests!  Our appointment was made for 2 pm on Saturday 7 September, little did we know that appointment would be life changing …

We were all nervous and quite sceptical as we set off on Saturday morning.  Lunch at Wetherspoons did little to help but it was nice to see some of Hatfield on the way through.

We arrived at EYES on St Albans for our 2 pm appointment with Jez.   The optician’s shop was full of colour, it was really quite funky!  We were instantly put at ease by Jez.  He asked James to complete a test on his brand-new iPad.  The iPad faced the window, so James had maximum clarity.  The test result was “moderate protan”.  We had tested James at home and he was “strong protan”, it seems daylight really can make a difference.

Jez very patiently explained exactly what the results of the test meant.  We knew James had an issue with the colour cones in his eyes but we had no idea that the green cone was overlapping the red one.  The glasses for protan deficiency were rolled out earlier this year.  The lenses in the glasses separate the green from the red cone, hence giving a lot more colour vision.  We believe James sees 20% of what we can see, with the glasses, he should be able to see around 40% of our colour vision, absolutely fantastic! 

Off we went outside holding 2 pairs of glasses.  The set of videos I took will explain everything else. 

A massive thank you to M&S Food for letting us look around their shop!  And a huge thank you to Jez for doing the interview on BBC Radio 2 and helping to change James life, and ours. 

Roll on next weekend when James’ glasses are set to arrive.  He is looking forward to a life with a lot more colour in it.

xx

The post My story – being a mum to a colour deficient son appeared first on Dear Geek.

One of my favourite gadgets this year has been my Kindle Paperwhite. I’ve wanted to share how It’s changed my reading habits for a long time and hearing about a client’s experience with them in a local Junior school has prompted me to finally get around to writing this post.

I’ve always loved reading, probably related to long school holidays in the south of France in my father’s television-free apartment. His ‘library’ was immense, back in the days when joining a book club meant being sent 3 random books a month along with the staple bestsellers like Stephen King.

My early teenage summers were horror-filled.

Living in London and riding the tube / bus usually meant there was a paperback close to hand. But, as time moved on so did I – commuting longer distances by train encouraged sleeping rather than reading. Then, when the commute relied on driving and small children meant going to bed brought on rapid sleep, books became a pleasure reserved for holidays. Small children grow a little and even that sunbed and book time is lost.

Disruptive Technology

Years pass and social media did encourage more reading. Short, sharp intakes of text, usually articles shared on Twitter or Facebook about web design (for work) or politics (for despair). Having a tablet and children reaching a less tiring age did bring reading back to the bedside table. But a tablet is full of distractions – an email pops up or someone posts something to Facebook and your attention wanders. Plus, even a 7 inch Nexus makes a thud when it hits you on the nose as you doze off.

So, when Black Friday 2015 came around, my Amazon Prime subscription that has completely changed how we shop encouraged me to look at Kindles again. I’d played with them before but never thought I read enough to justify the purchase. A special offer too good to refuse and the next morning my early Christmas present to myself arrived. A lovely Kindle Paperwhite.

And it is a lovely piece of kit. Perfectly proportioned and weighted, the matt black design making it not too precious to slip into a bag or pocket without looking cheap. I downloaded my first book and then the penny dropped.

Reading didn’t justify the purchase. The purchase justified the reading.

All the reasons I’d had to stop reading had gone. Books are bulky, inconvenient and pricey. The Kindle was always handy and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library made them free – with a particularly interesting twist.

The library doesn’t include every book nor every author. And I’m tight. So I started to explore different authors, styles and genres. Suddenly I was reading about D-Day from a German perspective or a homeless man making his living on the streets of Rio impersonating Charlie Chaplin.

So now I was hooked on reading again and in a very convenient way. When someone on Facebook mentioned a local author, I’d bought the book and it had been delivered to my Kindle without me moving from my seat. I was finding out how to change my Limiting Beliefs, how to build content with workshops.

It’s not just me

Even Helen, my otherwise gadget-uninterested wife, went from “Why have you bought that?” to “Can I have one?” in a few weeks. And she raves to her friends about it too.

So I was even more intrigued when one of our fairly marvellous website design clients sent me a new article to publish on his website. In Switching On Reluctant Readers with Technology, David Jarvis writes about his project using Kindles to motivate underachieving, disengaged readers in his junior school.

The results were amazing…

The end of term assessment showed that 100% of the involved pupils had improved in their reading attainment: with 60% of the initial group increasing in their reading age by over 6 months within the four month period. All pupils also improved in the number of questions that they were getting correct in their weekly comprehensions.

The e-reader trackers demonstrated that all pupils (identified as previously reluctant readers) were reading at home more regularly and for longer periods than they were before participating in the project. For some children the increase was very significant.

Parental surveys confirmed that all of the parents of the children in the focus group were reading more regularly with their children than before the intervention of the project.

The end or the beginning?

While some pronounce Kindle (and Amazon for that matter) the death of the book shop, I’m thinking it could well be the saviour of reading and the writer.

Do you have a Kindle? Or have you avoided them like the plague? I’d love to read your comments below or on the Facebook post.

The post The Geek Loves… his Kindle appeared first on Dear Geek.

Just been told about this offer by my friends at Ebuyer.com…

A 240GB Kingston SSD for £52.99 instead of £65.96

Thursday 15th October 2015 only

I love Solid State Drives (SSDs) – they make new PCs amazing and tired older PCs great again. Anyway, here’s how to get the offer…

1) Pop along to Ebuyer.com

2) Enter the QuickFind code 447256 in the search box at the top

3) Use the coupon code KINGSTON during checkout.

Good luck!

(Yes, that’s an Ebuyer affiliate link – that’s why they emailed me to tell me about the special offer and that’s why I’m sharing it!)

The post Fancy saving 20% off a 240GB Kingston SSD? Today only! appeared first on Dear Geek.

Or “What to do when your Windows 10 upgrade results in your Google Drive folder missing”

It happened again. Upgrading my OS messed up my Google Drive folder.

To be precise, the contents of my Google Drive folder were moved by the upgrade process. An even though the process then put them back in the same place on my C: drive, Google Drive sync could tell the folder had been recreated.

And it didn’t like it – Google Drive Sync refuses to start and tells you your Google Drive folder is missing. It’s simple to fix, just click the button to disconnect your account, then reconnect and a new folder will be created and all the files downloaded to it. Which is great if you meet one or all of these criteria…

1) You have a small amount of data synchronised

2) You have a very fast internet connection

3) You have some spare time on your hands

…I have none of the above.

However, if you’re feeling confident, you can work around this problem.

How to reconnect Google Drive Sync without downloading all your files again

1) Click that dreaded disconnect your account button

2) Shut down Google Drive Sync

3) Use Task Manager to ensure there are no instances of googledrivesync.exe are running

4) Open up a cmd prompt

5) Change directory to the location of your Google Drive Sync executable

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Drive"

(remove the (x86) if you are running 32-bit Windows)

6) Run

googledrivesync.exe -enable_snapshot_reconstruct

7) The Google Drive Sync setup will start. Login to your account and, when offered the opportunity, select the Advanced setup. Check the correct folders are going to be synchronised to the right location.

8) Google Drive Sync will now compare all your local files with your cloud copies and upload or download any differences as required.

Time saved, headache averted.

Now I just have to get used to having that Start Menu back…

The post Windows 10 : Google Drive 0 appeared first on Dear Geek.

About 3 months ago I wrote about how to remove google+ contact birthdays from your calendar and then, about a month and a half later had to sadly report that the fix was no longer working. But it looks like this time I can report some good news!

In a Google Apps updated entitled New views, settings and more for the Google Calendar Android app released on 25th February, they have this promising sounding snippet of information:

• New Birthday calendar settings (coming to Calendar web next week)
  • Birthday calendar can be hidden
  • Control whether birthdays from Google+ are shown

Hurrah!

I’m sure all the people in my Google+ circles are lovely, but I don’t really care about their birthdays. Now I don’t even have to pretend to care!

The post Good news for Google Calendar birthday haters? appeared first on Dear Geek.

It’s bad enough I have to have people in Google+ circles, why do I have to have their bloomin’ birthdays in my Google Calendar? This isn’t Facebook you know!

Sorry, bad news everyone – this doesn’t work anymore…

Update 8th January 2015: Google have removed Birthdays from the list of “interesting” calendars in the More tab, so these instructions no longer work

…but here’s some good news!

Update 25th February 2015: Looks like Google are making changes – good news for google calendar birthday haters?

If you’re building up a collection of contacts in your Google+ circles and you use the Google Calendar, you’ve probably noticed their birthday’s appearing in your diary.

We all know (don’t we?) how easy it is to hide a calendar by clicking on the little colour box in the sidebar key, but what if you want it removed more permanently? It’s not as easy as it should be.

How to remove Google+ birthdays from your calendar

1) Click on the little dropdown arrow next to “My calendars” and click “Settings”

2) On the next screen we see the list of your calendars.

Hang on, how come “Show in List” is greyed out and there’s no Unsubscribe link? That’s a bit cheeky!

3) Look for that little “Browse interesting calendars” link at the bottom and click it.

4) Click on the “More” tab under “Interesting Calendars” and now the “Unsubscribe” link appears for Birthdays. Click it and wave it goodbye!

I’m sorry Google, you’re going to have to try harder to stop me being a grumpy old man.

The post Remove Google+ Contact Birthdays from your Calendar appeared first on Dear Geek.

Somebody in New Zealand tried to use my Facebook account today. Thanks to my Facebook security settings they failed.

There are plenty of reasons for wanting to get into someone else’s Facebook account. From just a bit of vandalism to identity theft or conning your friends. All those sites and apps you login to with your Facebook account? Get the key to unlock all of them.

It’s also one that we can easily be tricked into giving up. How automatic is the habit of typing in your details if a site says “login with your Facebook account” or, the cardinal sin, using the same password for Facebook as for something else?

How did I know I was being hacked?

Why, a Facebook notification, of course!

I was informed that someone was trying to access my account in New Zealand. Of course, they could have been anywhere in the world, really. It’s not hard to spoof that. Regardless, even if they’re from Faversham (actually, especially if they’re from Faversham), they’re not welcome.

Facebook are pretty clever at spotting unusual behaviour, especially trying to login in two places on opposite sides of the world. But you can help it even more.

How can I improve my Facebook security?

All three settings I’m going to recommend are found in the same place, so…

• Login to your Facebook account
• Click the little drop-down menu in the top, right corner
• Click Settings
• Click the Security tab on the left hand list that appears

…or, if you trust me not to put up dodgy links, just go straight to https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=security

1. Login notifications

Not vital, but great fun for the paranoid. The first option in the list is Login notifications – click the little Edit link.

You can choose to receive emails, text messages or notifications on your mobile’s Facebook app when a new PC or device is used to access your account. These can be genuine occasions, you may have just bought a new laptop, but they can also be a wake up call to beef up your security.

2. Login Approvals

Follow the instructions to set up your mobile phone to receive a code by text message whenever you try to login to Facebook with a new device. Without this code, you cannot login – without your phone, your attacker won’t know the code.

A great idea, but if you lose your phone or cannot get a signal, this could be a pain in the backside. So make sure you set up option 3 too…

3. Code Generator

This uses the Facebook app on your smartphone or tablet to generate a code for you when you try to login somewhere strange, and you don’t need a phone signal (or even to have your smartphone on wifi) to generate it. The code changes every 30 seconds, it’s clever stuff.

Interestingly, there is an option to “Set up another way to get security codes” – this will generate a QR code to set up your Google Authenticator if you are already using it for 2-factor authentication on your Google account (what do you mean you’re not? I’ll have to write another blog!) – they just don’t tell you that it works with Google Authenticator, you have to experiment!

Finally – Common Sense:

• Don’t have easy to guess passwords
• Don’t use the same password for different sites (have a look at lastpass.com for help with this one)
• Don’t go typing your password into strange places

For those of you old enough to remember.

The post 3 quick steps to better Facebook security appeared first on Dear Geek.

Reading a blog featuring a post about another blog (and now writing one about it) is pretty standard fare for this geek nowadays – it’s all about content and social now, my friends. However, today was a pleasant change as one particular blog set the old memory lane / flashback sequence going.

A recent post on I Love Coffee looks at which is best for you when trying to come up with new ideas – beer or coffee. Close to my heart, as I often have to turn to something to fire up the blogging pixie inside of me.

So which is best – beer or coffee?

To cut a long story short:

• Beer is good for kickstarting your brain into coming up with great ideas – it affects your cerebral cortex, freeing you up from the distractions of ordinary life so it can come up with new ideas
• Coffee is good for executing those ideas – it gives you an energy boost and helps you focus

So both. But you don’t want the short story, do you? I don’t do short stories…

Why the trip down memory lane?

Many years ago (the early 90s to be precise) when I first started exploring the online world, I was an avid reader of Wired magazine (the US version of course, I am a geek-snob). Each month, near the front, they would list their “Drugs of choice” during the production of that issue. Of course, the usual clichés applied – Jolt Cola and pizza were geek-juice back then.

I carried this idea on to one of my early blogs, each entry starting something like…

Drugs of choice:
20mg Fluoxetine (Daddy's little helper)
10mg Loratadine (Hayfever season)
Cheese and Pickle rolls
Vanilla Latte

Vanilla seemed to be a regular visitor in the noughties – vanilla lattes, vanilla ice cream, even vanilla flavoured cigars – more an affectation than addiction.

But there were definitely situations where a particular food or drink could fire up a performance enhancement for me and my team of geeks in the big pharma I used to work at.

A long, painful session trying to set up a room full of laptops, wireless access points and bonded ISDN lines, all while locked in the basement of a French hotel, only ended in success after someone smuggled in a case of Budweiser. Regular infusions of chips would ensure teams could work for 14 hours, party for 4 hours and then drive to the next hotel to do it all again the next day.

What’s the drug of choice now?

Based on the beer / coffee analysis, perhaps the answer is in the classic Vodka & Red Bull? Now I’m no longer in my 20s 30s though, I’m not sure I’m in the right demographic for that.

Instead, I would recommend something I discovered on one of those big pharma trips to Dublin, where a week of extreme performance was fuelled by the “Baby Guinness”. A cut down B52, this is one measure of Baileys poured over three of Kahlua. In the hands of a master it can be poured to look like a miniature Guinness. In my hands, it looks more like a coffee cream, but I tend not to be too accurate with my measures either.

A lovely combination of coffee and alcohol, I can heartily recommend it for all your blogging or technical inspiration needs.

In the meantime, here’s the beer / coffee comparison from I Love Coffee that started it all…

The post Drugs of Choice – Performance Enhancements for Geeks appeared first on Dear Geek.

PayPal is probably the easiest, safe way to transfer money or make payments online. But sometimes the simple things, like changing your email address, are not as obvious as they should be.

Changing the email address on your PayPal account isn’t as obvious as it could be, but it’s not too complicated. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1) Login to PayPal.

(sorry, is that a bit obvious?)

2) In the My Account tab click Profile.

3) On the next screen that appears, the second line down should be email address – click the Update link.

4) You cannot change an address, you have to Add a new one before taking the old one away.

5) Once you have entered your new address, a few minutes later you should receive an email asking you to confirm it. Click that confirm link.

6) You can now go back to your Email page and, having selected the new address, click the Make Primary button.

7) IMPORTANT! I suggest you now logout of PayPal and then make sure you can login again with the new address.

Better safe than sorry!

8) Finally, you can now go back to the Email page, select the old address and click the Remove button.

Easy, eh?

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